Carrie Brownstein Talks Spells, Book, Sleater-Kinney

"I've really enjoyed not playing music."

Carrie Brownstein is a true renaissance woman. Since Sleater-Kinney went on hiatus in 2006, she has kept plenty busy, blogging for NPR Music, teaming with "Saturday Night Live"'s Fred Armisen as the comedy duo ThunderAnt, and freelance writing for various publications. But one thing she hasn't been doing is playing music. Unfortunately for fans of Brownstein's lightning-rod guitar work, she isn't too enthusiastic about returning to it either, as she revealed in an interview with Pitchfork on Wednesday.

For now, we'll just have to make do with the previously unreleased songs Brownstein posted on her NPR blog Monitor Mix, recorded in 2000 by the Spells, her duo with Mary Timony (formerly of Helium). All four tracks are streaming right now, with two available for free download for the next two weeks. After that, the four tracks will hit iTunes.

Carrie Brownstein: I mostly forgot about them. I remember them every couple of years. I was organizing my life-- meaning my music and my CDs-- and I saw the CD that we had made, or that had been burned from the time of the recording. We never meant to release these as an EP, we meant to write a full-length record. That never happened. I was just tired of it sitting around with no air, I guess [laughs]. I guess it's the final acknowledgment that really we're not gonna make a record [laughs]. It took me eight years to realize that we weren't actually gonna get our shit together and write a full-length album.

Pitchfork: What was the collaborative process like for creating Spells songs? Both for The Age of Backwards EP, released in 1999 on K Records, and these unreleased tracks.

CB: Mary and I toured together-- our bands toured together-- a couple times, and sometimes at the end of tour, we would hang out in each others' towns for maybe an extra day and write songs. But we really only worked on the songs for maybe, you know, literally one or two days. And then we would add another day to record. So it was always a very fleeting, kind of sped-up process of writing, and just kind of an extension of our friendship. We always talked about, "Oh maybe we'll send tracks back and forth over our computers." But we could never really get it caught up with technology [laughs]. We should have been able to send stuff back and forth, but it always just ended up being us sitting around one of our living rooms and writing, and then this recording out of necessity, because we knew we weren't gonna see each other for a long time. So both recordings were really hasty.

Pitchfork: And then the plan was to eventually do an album, but that didn't happen.

CB: Yeah, 'cause for the EP, I mean that was just... we knew that was just gonna be an EP, but with these songs, our plan was to continue sending ideas back and forth, and then to record in chunks. So we would record these four songs, and then ostensibly, six months or a year later, we would record a couple more songs, and after two years we would have this album and we would find somebody to put it out. K put out the EP, but Kill Rock Stars was gonna put out the record. For a while, it was a reality, and then we let go of that [laughs].

Pitchfork: Do you guys ever plan to get together again and record?

CB: Actually, since talking in the process of deciding to release these songs, we have talked about writing again. Every time I would re-discover these songs-- and literally that was maybe once every two years-- I was always struck by the fact that I still liked them, that I still thought that we had a good musical chemistry. And I think she feels the same way. So actually, listening to this, I don't know if it will be the Spells, but we have talked about her coming up to Portland and expanding the amount of people we would play with, but working on a project together. But that's not certain.

Pitchfork: What about the name the Spells? What's the story behind that?

CB: I don't remember [laughs].

Pitchfork: It's a good name.

CB: Yeah, actually it's so much better. It's so simple, it's so nice to have a band name you don't have to explain.

Pitchfork: Yes, it's a lot simpler than Sleater-Kinney, for sure. Do you have any other music projects going on right now?

CB: Not really, I've mostly been focusing on writing, and I've really enjoyed not playing music [laughs]. It will always be part of my life, but I don't feel the immediate need to be playing for people. Yeah, I got kind of tired of playing, I think. But I think it will be part of my life again, maybe. Maybe not right now.

CB: I'm working on a book right now, but I can't totally talk about the details of it. I plan to put out a book and just continue with the blog and other freelance projects. I have a piece in Slate today. They, for some reason, keep asking me to review music-themed video games. Gamers, I think, get really annoyed at me because I come across as kind of a Luddite. But actually, I've learned to really enjoy video games. It's really toxic to have in your house, because it's really distracting [laughs].

CB: Yeah, actually we have three pieces that we've made since the last one that are in the process of being edited. But we worked under the auspices of generosity, of people that are lending their time to the project in terms of editing and shooting. So of course, we're working around their schedules, so once those get edited we'll put them up. But yeah, Fred and I definitely plan on continuing doing ThunderAnt.

Pitchfork: Are you doing any other comedy-related stuff?

CB: No, but I did just work on a movie with James Mercer from the Shins [laughs].

Pitchfork: A movie?

CB: Yeah, we just both shot this indie movie here in Portland.

Pitchfork: Oh my goodness, yes, tell me more!

CB: [laughs] Oh no! The working title is Some Days Are Better Than Others, and it's directed by Matt McCormick, who has made music videos for both the Shins and Sleater-Kinney. He is an experimental filmmaker and documentary filmmaker here in Portland, and it's his first feature, and he cast both James and I in it.

Pitchfork: Oh wow, OK, so what's the plot? Are you guys lovers? Are you superheroes?

CB: That's a mere hobby. I told Matt that I was probably a liability for his film, but he cast me anyway. I auditioned; he didn't hand the roles to either of us, we auditioned. That's not where my future lies. I'd rather do spontaneous and silly work like ThunderAnt than have somebody's film on my shoulders. But it is challenging. And I think one of the reasons I haven't been doing music is because I think that some of my performance, like, needs [laughs] are being taken care of in other mediums. I mean, a lot of music for me was about-- I mean aside from the fun and challenge of writing and being really good friends with my bandmates-- getting to perform. It's not the same, doing a movie or doing ThunderAnt, but it definitely is akin to that kind of challenge.

Pitchfork: And you don't have to sleep in a van.

CB: I get to sleep in my own bed at the end of the day, yeah.

Pitchfork: You don't have to be on the road for weeks at a time.

CB: Exactly. My back doesn't hurt as much.

Pitchfork: Finally, I have to ask: Any possibility of a Sleater-Kinney reunion at any point?

CB: [laughs] [pauses] Yeah, I don't think we're ruling it out. But it's not going to be any time soon. We probably wouldn't use the word "reunion" [laughs]. We would say that the hiatus is off. It's just semantics, but yeah [laughs]. "Reunion" is a scary word. There's some horrible connotations in the word "reunion" [laughs]. It involves a lot of, like, face makeup, and everyone commenting about how much older we look. It's precarious: the longer you wait, I think it gets worse.

Pitchfork: Well, I know it would make a lot of people happy.

CB: It would make at least maybe ten people happy. I know we could fill a venue of ten people [laughs].

Pitchfork: I think it would be quite a bit more than that.

CB: OK, 30 to 40.

Pitchfork: You can play in your basement or something.

CB: Exactly. I would love to do a reunion tour if it only involved basements across the U.S.